What to do with old PCs, and really old PCs. The Belgian public sector does not know about linux.

The city (Brussels) falls short when it comes to preventing the waste of old but working PCs. Oxfam at Chaussée d’Ixelles 252 will only take PCs as old as 5 years. Generally if it has a Win8 or newer sticker, they take it. Win7 or older they reject.

Any PC can be dumped at C2fd (Quai Fernand Demets 54) regardless of age and they decide whether to trash it, sell it, or (I think) pass it downstream to Oxfam or Les Petits Riens. Looking at the machines on the shelves, there is nothing older than 5 years. It’s apparently getting trashed.

The mentality seems to be: if it can’t drive a version of Windows that is still officially supported, it’s trash. Yet I am working quite comfortably on a 2 core machine of nearly 20 years old, running a recent version of linux (used to write this post).

Neglecting business, there should be machines up to 15 years old on the shelves at C2fd, Oxfam, and Les Petits Riens with linux installed, and a “gratis” price tag (or nearly so). I don’t know what C2fd’s mission is, but Oxfam and LPR is they sell things to bring in money for charity. Is there no chance that the old (hard to sell) PCs could directly be put to use for their charitable causes, whatever that is?

In any case, with no business incentive for them to deal with old machines, the machines are needlessly going to waste. I have several PCs I don’t need, rescued from street curbs and too old for Oxfam.

Every public library with PCs has only Windows PCs. In principle, these 6+ y/o machines could go to libraries at no cost, which would give the public a way to experience linux. And what about schools? Are any schools in Brussels forward-thinking enough to have linux labs for student use?

The tech contractors working for libraries have user support phobia. They have made themselves unavailable and resist deploying any technology that triggers questions. So e.g, if wi-fi does not work with your equipment, there is no support channel (and they were not smart enough to support 802.11b and avoid captive portals). So they simultaneously fail in their mission to avoid creating a need for support.